With Merkel's Foes in Disarray, Germany Defies the Trump Trend

[Dill]

(04-26-2017, 01:50 PM)masterpanthera_t Wrote:   While I may disagree with the statement that the left is "aligned" with Islam, I think you're absolutely spot on with the assessment that there is not nearly (or any at all) the same fervor or sense of outrage when resisting Trump and his misogyny, compared to the near silence when it comes to vilification of those Islamic cultures with abhorrent values from the Western point of view.  

You seem like a reasonable enough guy, Masterp. But how would you respond to this counter-assessment of the current Islam debate.


When non-Muslim Westerners critics of Islam speak out on internet forums, there is a tendency to essentialize the religion. It is discussed as a monolithic whole, whose truest representatives are those whose practices are farthest from US norms. If one knows what Muslims in Afghanistan do, then one has seen the true face of the religion. And seen enough. One country bans women from driving, so it makes perfect sense to ask why “they”—world Muslims—do that.  The Islamic State kills homosexuals. Why do “they” do that? If Christians cut female genitals they are only fringe groups in backward places distorting Christianity. But if some Muslims do that, why must ask why their religion condones the practice. As Western armies continue their occupation of Muslim lands, we must question their claim Islam is a religion of peace.

When this tendency to generalize to the whole based on actions of some is criticized for what it is—a hasty generalization of the sort people always protest when applied to their own religion—then Pew polls and the like are trotted out. X% of Muslims living in Britain or Egypt think stoning adulterers is ok.  The gap is closed and we are quickly back to the monolith. If you know what the Islamic State or a Mullah in Iran says Islam is, then you know Islam. Obvious questions—how many women are actually stoned in Britain or Egypt or any Muslim country, how many homosexuals executed, etc?—are not asked.

 We hear that Muslims won’t step forward to criticize their religion, and that some group called “leftists” hypocritically criticize Christianity for misogyny and homophobia while “defending” Islam on the same counts, or simply remaining “silent.”  Some are puzzled that "leftists" will turn out by the thousands to protest the election of a sexual assaulter to the highest office in their own country, but don’t turn out crowds to protest religious practices in other countries like Saudi Arabia  or Afghanistan (where? Before an embassy? Every day?). They have in some sense “latched on” to Islam to defend this monolith.  But repeated invitations to provide examples of leftist “support” for Islam, when not met with silence, turn out to be ordinary defenses of the right to freedom of religion, and/or a refusal of the invitation to scapegoat based on religion and ethnicity.


That demographics and political groups famous for their persecution of gays and opposition to women’s rights suddenly hold up progressive liberal/leftist ideals of equality as the essence of Western civilization passes unremarked, even as those groups retain the logic of minority scapegoating and turn it upon a new religious group.

A hypothesis—there are in fact a great many liberals, “leftists” and liberal, leftist Muslims criticizing misogyny everywhere in the world, including the US and Muslim countries, often de-coupling misogyny from religion, but that dialogue and struggle over women’s rights gets little coverage in the US mass media—some in the MSM, almost none on Fox and the myriad right wing websites now emerging to warn us of cultural suicide.  It would not be very difficult in a forum like this to link to a wide variety of source evidence, but I am guessing the initial response would be that a list of links would have to be very long and detailed to escape the reverse of hasty generalization—the charge those many sources were marginal, a small percentage of worldwide debate on these matters.